


Desert Glass

by nicasio_silang



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her father still isn't home. Her mother is dead, but Maria has her scarlet red lipstick, and her dark, clever eyes. She's made herself a ham and cucumber sandwich; she lies on her bed and takes small bites upside-down, the fission book splayed open across her stomach. She considers the life of the spy Howard thinks she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desert Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ as "Dust is Gonna Settle".

_At the control bunker, six miles south of the explosion, the man in charge of the test, the physicist Kenneth Bainbridge, turned to Oppenheimer as the mushroom cloud ascended and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”_

_\- A Visit to Trinity_

 

The sky is dry as a crack in a dirt road, dirty and yellow white blue. Low white houses with dry grass deserts between them, sidewalks deep in sand dust. The wheels of her bicycle creak through the middle of the road. Her pale bare legs, her little-girl hands with chipped nails, her knees rotating up and down, her short dark hair curling under her ears, no wind for it to blow in. Her thin shirt with the sailor collar. Her fawn's eyelashes, her half-lidded eyes, under cat's-eye sunglasses. Her red lips, her slim wrists. Maria pedals slowly through the quiet streets of Los Alamos. 

At the corner, the main street starts. A butcher, a diner, a pharmacy, a malt shop, a one-room library with iron-barred windows, the four-room high school, an imitation of a town. The shop owners don't own the shops. They're janitors, cooks, low-level technicians, they're wives, all from the Technical Area. The stores only open after 12pm, or before 8 in the morning. Their windows are opaque with dust. One of the wives walks down the sidewalk, clipped like she has somewhere to be, though there's nowhere to be. It's Saturday, but still all the men who lay down their heads in the beds in this place are at work. It's June 16, 1945. They are always at work.

A boy her age is on the wood slat stairs of the high school building, doing nothing at all, watching. Jozef. One of the Poles. He waves. Maria rides past him and leaves her bike spinning its wheels in the air on the curb outside the library. The library is always locked, but always unmanned. At home, she has four books from the library, no stamps in them. _The World Set Free_ , _We_ , _Synthetic Men of Mars_ , _At the Mountains of Madness_. All hers. She has a key from her father's glove compartment. 

Today she has a sheaf of her father's papers tucked in the back pocket of her shorts again. The library is dim, dust motes sparkling in the light of high windows, the air heavy with pages. She pushes her glasses up into her hair. Out of the sun, she has goose bumps on the skin of her arms, all down her long legs. 

Today there's a man leafing through the card catalogue. Not too tall, or too handsome. Younger than her father, but her father is old. He's standing up very straight, and he's slicked his hair down on his head very severely, as if it's done something naughty. He doesn't startle when she goes up to stand beside him and slips the papers from her pocket, scans them for relevant words, pulls out the F through J drawer, and runs a slender finger over the cards, not really looking.

"Well, hello there."

He talks to her like she's a kid, so she talks to him like he's nobody. 

"If you can't tell, I'm busy." She pulls out the card for _Fission of Uranium, The_ , and traces the edge of it with a nail, then holds the card to her lips, drags it across the side of her face, looking at her father's papers, looking at the man's hands, stilled in the A through C drawer.She spins away and walks backward into the stacks and smiles at him around the card. "And I know you, don't I. You're that Howard Stark fellow."

"I am. Please tell me I'm infamous, you'll really brighten my day." 

He's leaning a shoulder on the shelf, he talks to her but looks at the papers in her hand. She turns them towards him slightly, revealing the letterhead and the top of her thigh.

"Barbecues at my house. Welcoming the machinists and new engineers. My father said you were just a welder, but don't take it too hard, that's what he calls everyone without full clearance." She quirks her lips a bit sadly for him, and dances behind one of the shelves. It isn't the row she was looking for. It doesn't matter; she hears him following her.

"And last January," he starts.

"My sweet sixteen." She can see him through the shelves, his body split into sections by the books. 

"Not many teenagers there," his voice echoes off the ceiling.

"I relate better to the more mature set," she says as he rounds the corner and is right in front of her. He smells dry, like dust. His shoulders are so wide.

"I recall. You were quite the hobnobber for such a young lady." 

He's dogging her steps casually, like he's browsing. He has his own catalog card hanging between two fingers, dangling so loose it might drop. He doesn't look at her really, he looks at the books on one side, skates his eyes over her, looks at the books on the other side.

"We're in a very special place, at a very special time," she says, as if the first person to explain it to him. It feels special in the library; there are books here that came to town in briefcases handcuffed to the wrists of men with no keys. "It pays to make connections."

She walks through the aisle, watches him over her shoulder. His tie is tucked into his waistband, and it looks like he's right in the middle of growing his mustache, the whole affair still a bit scraggly. With the dust on his shoes, it's the only thing out of place. She likes it. 

"Is that what your father's teaching you?" 

"The General doesn't need to hobnob. That's up to everyone else. And I don't need a teacher, I do fine by myself. He hasn't taught me a thing in years."

"Really. Don't take this the wrong way, miss, but you remind me of the man. In the hair and the attitude. Though, is that why you've snuck in here? And stolen classified documents. To discover why you never see him. I'm sure a jury would understand." 

And then he laughs big. She could scream. She turns on one heel to look him in the face. 

"I never see him because we keep out of each other's way. I want to know what you're building."

He watches her mouth and her hands. He watches her feet in their sandals. 

"Even the men's wives don't ask that," he says.

She knows a few who have, earlier on, a year of more ago. They got pregnant then, they kept their peace now, busy raising children with no official place of birth.

But she says, "They lack imagination."

He likes it. He gives her a sharp smile.

"Of course, I could turn you in just for breaking in here. Nobody's above the rules. For all I know," he slides closer on soft steps, "You're a little Nazi minx."

She takes a step back. She widens her eyes. She pulls the papers to her chest. She lets her voice waver.

"And what would you do with me if I was?"

Howard likes that too. His smile turns.

 

In Maria's bedroom that night. Her father still isn't home. Her mother is dead, but Maria has her scarlet red lipstick, and her dark, clever eyes. She's made herself a ham and cucumber sandwich; she lies on her bed and takes small bites upside-down, the fission book splayed open across her stomach. She considers the life of the spy Howard thinks she is. 

A year or more ago, her father told her that every Nazi was a rat, and in her mind's eye she sees her long, naked tail, her skittering feet, the whisker grimace, the small eyes shooting back and forth. Snatching secrets in her claws, running manic, boarding a ship, an Atlantic liner, feeling the wind batter the bare shells of her ears. Running one finger across Howard's jaw, slow and deliberate, an animal gesture, she sees him, she can make him falter and shake, letting himself be caressed by the rat.

She turns on her side, puts her dinner on the dresser next to her hairbrush, next to her pencil and paper, next to the book on fusion, the book about TNT, and the book about Mars. She folds her legs and slips them over each other like riding a bike, languid, deep in the sensation. 

As a spy, as a rat, she lets him grab her by both wrists. 

 

The chatter of people nearby, the chatter of birds overhead, drooping into the sparse trees. The sound of an engine running, parked. Monday afternoon outside the high school, dry and bright. Boys and girls stream onto the street, down the sidewalk, their hands into their mothers' hands. Maria kneels on the stairs to tighten her shoelaces, and a shadow covers her. 

"They teach you anything worthwhile in there?" Howard asks. Maria shrugs and ties more slowly.

"Glorified babysitting. They leave me alone with my books." 

The books are next to her on the steps: economics, chemical engineering, Dante. He eyes them and eyes her. Her bicycle is around the corner, leaning against the building and waiting, but when he goes down to his car and opens the passenger side door, she gathers her books up and slides in.

She's dwarfed by the Ford's interior. Her legs seem skinnier, sliding on the seat, she feels herself sweat. When Howard gets in the driver's side he's so big, he takes up so much space, his hip is tight against her stack of books, the books go flush against her thigh, she can smell the smell of him: a long day, something antiseptic, something burning, hot metal, the hot sun. He has a flower she hadn't seen him carrying, a daisy, and he places it between them. He doesn't say it's for her, doesn't really look at her. He pulls into the street and they roll, lazy, down the road. 

"I never really caught onto Dante, when I was in school," he says. He speaks out of the corner of his mouth like a man in a movie. "Economics though, I was always good with numbers, with the theory and all of that."

She looks at him closely. He's not patronizing her, she's quite sure. He's watching the road, one hand at the top of the wheel, one at the bottom, squinting. 

"I like numbers too," she says. "They do what you tell them to."

He laughs, abruptly, and looks right at her like he knows exactly what she means.

She leans one arm on the window and tilts her head into the wind like she's seen other women do in cars. She thinks of the image they make, driving slow where anyone can see. Howard waves to someone on the sidewalk and they see her in the car. They wave back. It's only a few minutes to the malt shop. Nothing is far away unless you have the papers to go into Santa Fe, and the papers take days to process.

Inside the shop, everyone turns to wave when they come in, and everyone knows them. There are no strangers in town. Sam Allison and Robert Oppenheimer are at the counter sipping colas and scribbling on napkins. They spare a hello for Howard, and a nod for her. Robert's pale young son Pete is on a stool next to them, straining to reach the straw of his chocolate malt, straining to see his father. The booths are full of young men and women in white button-down shirts and clean slacks. Maria takes a seat by the front window and tells Howard, "I like vanilla." He comes back with two Coke floats. 

"So how's your illicit research panning out?" He speaks loud enough for anyone to hear, if they cared to. She looks around them and matches his volume.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Howard."

"Is that right?" He casually taps her hanging foot with his own. "What's all this reading up on chemical engineering, then? Most young ladies don't innocently dabble like that." She opens her mouth but he plunges on, even louder. "Building anything yet? Your old man's so busy, you know, he asked me to keep an eye on you."

And she realizes he's laying groundwork. And she wants to crawl into his lap and bite his lip, kiss his eyelids. She wants to give him something in return. She slides her leg against his like it's an accident. 

"I'll tell you all my plans," she says, and he looks at her like he sincerely wants to know them.

 

Four nights later, her father comes home for the first time in a week. Still uniformed impeccably, but his hair in some disarray, over his eyes, and he smells like she imagines the Technical Area must: concrete dust, something clean and scientific, shoe shine. It's been her father's smell for as long as she can remember, the smell of his work, of their lives after her mother. Maria, on the couch, looks up from her notes on the separation of soft particles via hydrocyclone.

"Good evening, General," she says.

He mmm's at her, goes into the kitchen. She sees him pour a glass of whiskey without ice, and he doesn't mention that the bottle is more than half empty when he hasn't touched it until now. He talks to her without coming back into the living room, he leans against the kitchen counter and swirls his glass compulsively.

"Still in school, Maria?"

"Yes, they're keeping us through the summer, they say. So we have somewhere to be."

"Makes sense." 

She can hear him tapping his foot against the cabinet, rhythmless. She's already sure he won't stay tonight, probably go to Oppenheimer's house across the street and badmouth Szilard late into the night. She's crouched outside the window before and heard them going at it, Robert in whispers, her father bombastic, both a bit terrified of the other, at opposite sides of the room, but she could never catch enough of their words to satisfy her. _The reaction_ , she heard that a lot, and _what if they use it._

"Some of the kids don't even speak English. I don't know why you let them in here, dad." She flips idly to the index, runs a finger down the list. 

"Their fathers speak just fine," he says, and she hears his empty glass go in the sink. "You know, I think it's almost done." He strides right into the middle of the room and stands in front of her, but faces the door. "We'll be able to go home soon."

"Oh. That's good," she says, but they've lived in Los Alamos since Maria was 13 years old. Before they came here, she had a mother, she played with dolls, she'd never talked to a real man. She can't go home.

"I'll be across the street," he says.

 

Two weeks later, Howard shows up at her door in the early afternoon with a puppy in his arms. He says it's named Thunder. 

Thunder is small and his fur is dark and wiry. He has intelligent brown eyes and impressively mobile eyebrows. His tail is always going like a helicopter, and he licks her hand. He needs to be taken out for walks, and fed twice or three times a day, Howard isn't sure. He needs water and a place to sleep.

She enjoys the sentiment. She enjoys the look on Howard's face when she touches the dog's face and pinches its ears. She knows what he meant by it. Still, Thunder lives in the backyard, and then doesn't come home, and then she sees him one day far down the road that ends in dust and brush, going out into the desert. She thinks she did her best, and she did thank Howard, in any case. 

 

After three weeks, he takes her to his own little pre-fabricated house and shows her how to take her clothes off for him. He'd used no pretense in inviting her. _Come over tomorrow,_ he'd said, so she did. The next door neighbor, Mrs. Brixner, sees him letting her in. Maria looks her in the eye and smiles. 

There isn't much of Howard in the things in his house. He's only been at Los Alamos for a year, but it doesn't seem he'd brought much with him, or accumulated anything at all. The standard table and three chairs, grass green couch, the print of a ship at sea that hangs on the wall of every fourth house in town. The desk that sits in her bedroom is in the corner of his living room. They pass by the bathroom and it smells of Brylcreem. Down the short hall, his bed is the same as her father's. 

There are no bookshelves, no books. There's only one pen and a pad of clean paper on the bedside table. She can't imagine his life here without her, what he must do to pass the time. She thinks she sees him sitting quietly on the edge of the bed, smoothing his tie, his hair, waiting for her. She sees him shaving silently, listening for her knock at the door. She sees him picking up the pen, but he doesn't have anything to write about until she arrives. She feels a wave of what must be affection, thinking of him like that, waiting for her to give him life.

His hand falls on her shoulder from behind. 

"Do you want to undress, Maria?" he asks. She turns her head and quirks her lips at him.

"Are you going to watch me?" 

He circles around her and sits on the bed slowly, deliberately, stepping careful, giving her time to leave. By the time he's comfortable, she has half the buttons of her blouse undone. He reaches his hand up to brush hers. 

"Take your time, now," he says, before leaning back on his elbows. He's sprawled his legs and she steps between them.

Maria slips the shoulders of her shirt off, hitching the hem of it up above her belly-button. She watches his face and unbuttons from the bottom now, leaving just one done up in the middle before moving her hands down to the catch of her small white shorts, tilting her hips like women are supposed to. Her thigh touches his knee. He's watching the same way he's watched her for weeks. She watches her own hands, presses her lips together, and slides her shorts off for a long time, short fingernails leaving red stripes along her legs. Her cotton underwear is paler than her skin; when she unbuttons the last button of her shirt, there's nothing underneath. Her little pink nipples are hard and she wants him to reach for her but she sees it in his eyes: he wants her to come to him. She crawls into his lap. It's their first compromise. 

She feels his skin through two layers. She puts a hand there, puts her lips here, feels the rhythm of him go harder, hotter. It isn't so much about finding what he likes. She wants to create his reactions. She sees herself in the hitch of his breath in the slow smile turned grimace. She'd draw blood just so he would change his expression, but she just has to straddle him tightly and look him in the eye with her lips open so that he'll touch her. 

His hand covers her entire stomach. Maria has to close her eyes when he drags his palm up her breastbone, a finger and thumb circle her neck, release, and move back down, all the way down to the edge of her panties, and trace a helix pattern on the fabric. She's touching her own skin, elbows bent so she can feel her back, feel her skin warming in the hot room with no windows cracked. 

She pronounces his name with a break in her voice, "Howard," and opens her eyes to see him hear her, see his pupils dilate as he reaches with his other hand and pulls her down so they're flush together, her nose touching his, his wet breath mingling with hers, gasping like a fish.

He puts his lips to her ear, to the point of her jaw. She's never let him kiss her on the mouth, and she tilts her head to invite him to her neck. His mustache scratches her roughly and she says "oh," fists her hands in his shirt. She can feel his erection underneath her, firm and hot, and she listens to his breathing while she presses down against it, feels herself react while he reacts while she rubs side to side. She isn't so lost yet that she can't control herself when his hands grab her hips and hold her down on him hard, sudden, and he grinds up into her. She gives him his moment and feels how her pelvic bones are sore but prepared; she considers. She says, "Yes."

 

In the early morning of July 16, they drive a long way, out past the gates, out far from anyone. When they're far enough, Howard pulls to the side of the road and switches off the engine. 

"Now we wait," he says.

The whole world is stretched out before them, ripe and empty for as far as she can see. The Pajarito and Quemazon mountains, which have been the closed gates of her world for three years, cup the desert like the palms of two hands. Howard's hand cups her shoulder, his arm is hot around her neck. He's given her ludicrous, near-opaque sunglasses that he insists she must wear when the time comes. He still won't quite tell her what will happen then. 

"The culmination of dreams," he says. "The definitive moment."

"The culmination of a dream is its end," she says, her head on his shoulder. She's stalling about the glasses, knows they'll look awful on her small face. She's playing with the hem of her dress.

But he takes her very seriously, and says, "It could well be."

She shifts around and drapes herself over his lap, puts the glasses on, tucks her head into the curve of his neck, lets her fingers run up and down the front of his shirt. It's nearly too hot in the car, windows only cracked, to be so close. But he doesn't argue, he ghosts his palm along her legs.

"I think I'll build things, when I'm older," she says into his chest.

"What, and take my livelihood away?"

"Oh, not at all like you, you're just the welder." He chucks her under the chin and she smiles where he can't see. "No, I'll be your Oppenheimer. I'll dream it, you'll build it."

He checks his watch and puts on his own glasses. From below, he looks like a pilot, or a mad scientist, or a powerful man. His mustache has come in now, and is neatly trimmed. He looks gruff, but smiles easily. She's noticed that people take to him the way they can't to her. And he's begun to listen when she talks.

"Suppose you'll have to tell me what your dreams are, then," he says.

She means to tell him right then, to start small so he'll follow her, but instead the world lights up. She snaps her neck around to watch.

Every crevice and peak of the faraway mountains is filled with light, beautiful and sharply bright, as if God were descending. Behind her glasses, she has to squint, she feels her eyes water, she can't feel Howard breathing, can't hear anything at all. And now a cloud like a mountain rises out of the desert to the south, and keeps rising. Yellow, orange, red, red and purple, blue and red. A bulbous welt on the earth, undeniably alive, still expanding. The belly of a mother giving terrible birth. The end of a world. She thinks of Wells, and of the face of Mars. She thinks of being closer, of this thing towering over her, the wind that's rocking the car at her face, tearing at her, dust and sand like a solid thing. She thinks she hears Howard say _good Lord_. She thinks she feels the entire world crack open just for her. 

For a long time they are like that, clutched to each other while it grows, growls, glows, peaks, and then hangs in the sky. Maria wants to cry; she knows it's the most amazing thing she'll see in her lifetime, and soon it will be over, and sink back into the ground. 

She can feel Howard's rough cheek against her cheek, and it's wet. She can't look away from the red cloud out the window, so she leans back to speak into his ear.

"Those are my dreams, Howard," she says. "That looked just like my dreams."


End file.
